Payments Brews: Crowdfunding the Brewery

Meet Brad and Bruce Budge, co-owners of Budge Brothers Brewing, a craft beer start-up here in Spokane, Washington. They make great beer and are challenged to expand their facilities to support increasing demand for their product. As 20-somethings, they aren’t interested in taking on any new debt — and might have trouble procuring it anyway — so I suggested they think about a crowd-funding approach.

Crowd-funding, for those of you who don’t live and breathe payments — is one of the many interesting new activities in payments. Individuals create a profile for their projects (such as making a movie, creating a play, or making beer), set a dollar goal and fundraising end-date, and then ask individuals to contribute to the project, often offering small gifts in return for participation.

Kickstarter, one of the leading crowd-funding platforms, offers an “all or nothing” approach to the project: if the dollar goal is not achieved by the fundraising end-date, none of the money pledged is collected and the project isn’t funded. Kickstarter claims 44% of projects have achieved their funding goals.

Indiegogo, another provider, also offers this “all or nothing” funding option, but also offers a pure fundraising option, with fees varying depending on whether fundraising goals were met.

Bruce and Brad decided to give this crowd-funding thing a try. They’ve put up a campaign on Indiegogo (they liked the pure fundraising option) and are a few days into their campaign. Follow this link to view their campaign video:

I’ll be following their progress over the next month or so — it will be interesting to follow the trajectory of their fundraising. You can follow too. Oh, and feel free to contribute… Spokane (and I) need good beer!